


The Wise Father

by AylaofNoPeople



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jon Snow is a Targaryen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-07 00:31:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11047551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AylaofNoPeople/pseuds/AylaofNoPeople
Summary: Mance Rayder is more than he first appears to be, and he has his own reasons for wanting badly to protect Jon.  Show verse setting based on a book verse theory.  Speculation, but not really any spoilers to it at this point.





	1. Chapter 1

News always traveled quickly through camp to Mance's tent.

"Ned Stark's bastard wants to give up being a crow!"

Mance's heart raced, and his hands began to sweat. His head also pounded, making it impossible to focus on any thought in particular, until finally one stood out.  _I need to stall_ . 

"Tormund, I've some things I need to repack anyway. Have a bit of fun with the boy while I take his measure," he muttered, moving away from the main living area of the tent.

He grasped his bedframe and eased himself down onto it.  _Could it really be true after so many years?_ Ancient feelings rushed at him, but he knew these for the distractions that they were. 

A part of Mance wanted it to be true, wanted above all else to be able to see the boy's face, to get to know him. But that was exactly why he needed to think instead.

Because if it was true, no matter what it might mean to Mance personally; it would also mean that the boy's life was in terrible danger, danger that even Mance could not protect him from, not without risking everything that might have made that protection valuable in the first place.

He'd need to stage quite a mummer's farce, interrogating the boy. Dozens of ideas competed for his attention, but taking a deep breath, he recognized that he could only plan ahead so far before speaking to the boy himself. Any plans he might make would needs be altered based on whether he believed this defection to be authentic or not.

The tent flap opened, and a figure was shoved roughly inside.

_Ah, Lyanna, look at what we made!_

For a moment, Mance could not help but indulge himself, his original self, at this first meeting between he and his son. Had he thought of him as 'the boy' just moments before? Had he truly thought that he could somehow distance his heart through such wordplay?

His eyes roamed greedily over Jon's face. Dark hair, pale skin and flashing eyes, the color of which he was certain he could already guess. Mance drew in his breath sharply to see how much of a Stark his son appeared to be. It had been so long since he had worn the face he was born with, longer still since he had seen that reflection. _Is there yet any of me in him too?_

The tent erupted in laughter.

"Your grace! You hear that? From now on you better kneel every time I fart!"

It was time, time to begin before he lost his nerve. "Stand, boy," Mance instructed, moving past Tormund and into the center of the tent. "We don't kneel for anyone beyond the wall," he said, as he stepped closer. "Soo, you're Ned Stark's bastard." Jon's expression confirmed this, although Mance had already instantly comprehended the truth on seeing Lyanna's eyes.

For a moment, he couldn't help but admire the shrewd gamble Eddard Stark had made that people would be so eager to believe a man who had no prior history of lewd behavior with women had nonetheless fathered a bastard with an unknown woman, simply to delight in besmirching a great lord.

It had provided a strong enough cover that no one questioned the tale, even when both the babe and the corpse of his true mother (a woman also rumored to have been dishonored, though Mance was surprised how much resentment he still felt at this) had both arrived back at Winterfell together. Or at least, that was how he had understood events to have occurred in his constant search for such news over the past two decades.

Still, he shook these off as unhelpful thoughts and dismissed the rest of the party. He couldn't help but grin at the young spearwife's obvious interest in the lad. "The girl likes you. You like her back, Snow? That why you want to join us?"

He willed him to say yes. It might not have satisfied some of the wildlings, but it was an answer anyone could understand. And while the fact that killing Half Hand would alienate Jon from his brothers was quite obvious, the Free Folk had thier pride ... they would not take it kindly if the best reason they were given was that he joined them out of mere desperation.

"Don't panic boy, this isn't the damned Night's Watch where we make you swear off girls."

 _Thank you old friend, you don't know how much you just helped me._ "This chicken eater you thought was king is Tormund Giantsbane," he told Jon, out of a sense of appreciation to which he could not otherwise give voice.

Tormund circled Jon. "I still can't believe this pup killed Half Hand."

That was just the trouble.

_Neither can I. Neither do I._

He hadn't ever known any of the Starks besides Lyanna. But in those precious months they had spent together, he had come to know a great deal about them. There was nothing they valued above thier honor.

Jon's blood was half Stark, but his raising had been wholly so. It made one a very unlikely candidate to engage in oath breaking.

He had known the Half Hand too. Faced between a slow death at the hands of his lifelong enemies or making his own choice, Quorin was quite intelligent enough to have staged a fight and forced Jon into being the less painful means towards that death. He could have done so even without having told Jon, although the scenario that concerned Mance was that he may very well have been even more clever and convinced Jon to embed himself as a spy.

_So what are you playing at here, my son?_

He briefly cursed the gods. Would thier malice for him be neverending? To have allowed him this purest heart's wish, only to frame it in terms of such dire risk?

Jon's answers were clever enough, and he conducted himself well, cautious but without even a fraction of cravenness. Mance had no trouble seeing why Jeor Mormont would have selected him for leadership in the future. And aye, the Free Folk had chosen a traitor from the Night's Watch as thier King. If you were being questioned as to why you were a traitor, it was a good enough point to make, although Mance made a pretense of offense, motioning his guards to stand down on his behalf.

Still, that wasn't enough, not to make it convincing to a king. "Why do you want to join us, Jon Snow?"

The downward glance was so transparent Mance wondered if the other men in the tent had seen it.

"I want to be free," Jon said.

"No, I don't think so," he replied thoughtfully. Common sense alone compelled one to dig deeper after being told exactly what they already wanted to hear. "I think what you want most of all is to be a hero." It was what his mother had wanted at a similar age.  _You too_ , an inner voice reminded him.

"Now, I'll ask you one last time," he said, allowing menace into the softness of his voice. "Why do you want to join us?"

"We stopped at Craster's Keep on the way North. I saw ..."

At Jon's hesitation, Mance purposefully hardened his face. "You saw what?"

"I saw Craster take his own baby boy and leave it in the woods. I saw what took it."

He searched Jon's expression.  _This is the truth_ . 

Mance knew of whom Jon spoke. All the Free Folk knew of them. But to see one and to live to tell the tale ...

"You're telling me you saw one of them?" he said, watching each nuance of Jon's reaction, even as he forced himself not to shudder.

Every instinct he had urged him towards belief at Jon's steady answering gaze, even regardless of his need to impress the other Free Folk. Still, he forced his voice to harshness. "And why would that make you desert your brothers?"

Jon gulped before he answered, looking down again, though Mance did not think it sprang from deception this time.  _Shame, perhaps_ ? 

"Because when I told the Lord Commander, he already knew," Jon admitted, looking up through eyes filled with disillusionment.

Not only did Mance believe him, but it also fit perfectly into the Free Folk's worst perception of the leaders of the southern realms as devious and full of guile. Mance found it hard to disagree with that perception on one hand, but on the other, most of Rhaegar Targaryen's life had been occupied trying to unweave and reweave the strands of such political decisions.

Jon had yet to finish though.

"Thousands of years ago, the first men battled the White Walkers and defeated them. I want to fight for the side that fights for the living. Did I come to the right place?"

Mance glanced Jon over once more. He had not gotten the whole truth, not by far. But it was enough to buy him and his son some time.

"We'll need to find you a new cloak," he concluded, wishing he could breathe an open sigh of relief.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This theory has always intrigued me for the mere fact that Jon did get to know Mance. I know this theory has its haters, and I know all the holes they poke in it too, but this fic is not intended as a justification of how it might be true; just an exploration of how Mance would have felt if it had been. Setting is mostly all show ... Mance never went to Winterfell or married Dalla or any of the stuff cut for TV. 
> 
> GRRM owns the characters, and David and Dan own the show monologue, but I've mixed that with my own work. Kisses to all three of them for such inspiring material!


	2. Chapter 2

Tormund returned after settling Jon in. He'd lodged him in the same tent Tormund himself shared with several bachelors and set him to housecarl work. "He can use tools, but no weapons. And there are plenty of eyes watching him."

Mance nodded agreeably as he picked at his nails with a knife. "I wonder what the Starks might pay to get him back ..." he murmured. "Bastard or not, he was raised with them ... you have to imagine that there's some affection there."

Tormund squatted nearer to the fire, warming his hands before grinning up at Mance. "I thought you were going to let him join us ... to be a hero and fight for the living and end up in the songs."

Mance smirked back. "A man has a right to change his mind about something, once," he explained. "I'm just thinking of the what ifs, if it ends up young Snow decides to change his mind a second time. And I admit, if his family wanted him back, that a handful or two of dragons couldn't hurt us in our upcoming endeavors either."

He suspected the Starks wouldn't pay out a single farthing to ransom an oath breaker, but Tormund's canny expression told him that he had been successful in planting the idea that Jon's life alone had value. The Free Folk did not use currency among themselves, but if they wanted the better quality goods that several merchants were willing to trade for from the south, then goods in kind alone would not suffice.

The rest of the day, Mance allowed for his people. The primary duty of the King Beyond the Wall often seemed to be settling disputes, but that was partly his own fault. Generally, the wildlings were touchy about thier pride, hot tempered, and long in thier memories. And he had made it plain that he would lead no less than a unified people south to the wall. It was a powerful incentive for them to settle their differences, but grudges lasting generations lacked any means of doing so without a strong mediator.

Tormund remained with him off and on, apparently idle enough to enjoy the people watching. "You're a patient man my friend," he said, as the last bunch left Mance's tent.

Mance chuckled at his friend's remark, then noted the lateness of the day.  He didn't want to be alone, and he had already given a rough sketch of his future plans to the other man.  "Bring your crew here to sup here tonight."

As the camp had begun to grow, a number of bold young single women had thought to audition for the role of Queen Beyond the Wall by usurping Mance's housekeeping. There had been a couple of nasty quarrells until a group of matrons and widows had settled the problem between themselves by beginning to cook for him. Pleased to see his people settling problems amongst themselves, Mance had happily relinquished some of the chores he was used to taking care of for himself, and a great portion of what he recieved in tribute, he gifted back to these women, especially the widows.

This evening, a woman named Jenla brought him a great portion of an onion and goat soup that filled his tent with it's mouthwatering aroma. "Brought plenty for you andenough to share," she murmured, putting his sitting area to rights once she sat the soup down.

"Smells wonderful," he replied. "I'm grateful to you for the hard work that went into making it, Jenla."

"Oh it wasn't me," she said with a proud smile. "My daughter Geilla has been learning how to cook from me for the past year. She's still young enough for me to keep home a few more years, but old enough that I've been teaching her all the arts of tending a hearth. I hope you and your friends enjoy it," she said, as she finished.

Mance responded with an amiable wave goodbye, despite the envy that gnawed at him.

He remembered teaching Rhaenys how to walk, following behind her tiny form (so many times!) letting her little hands grasp his fingers as she toddled, until the day when, with a giggle of delight, she had let go and taken three more unsteady but fearless steps without him before she plopped down. That had only been the beginning, and he felt a sharp pain in his heart remembering the first time she had completed the process without his help and the wondrous smile of amazement with her new abilities that she had beamed up at him.

Aegon, of course, had only been a baby the final time he had seen him.

And now, Jon. The only child of his to reach adulthood (he prayed the one that would outlive him as well) and yet all of the milestones of his childhood and adolescence had been taught to him by another father.

Out of the envy, Mance felt the sort of flash of insight that moves too rapidly to be recalled or analyzed, but the idea that he ought to have drawn some sort of conclusion from these feelings teased at his mind.

Then Tormund arrived in a party of half a dozen. Mance knew two of the thanes, but not the others, nor the warg, Orell. Ygritte, he had only met the once, although he suspected she had played a larger role in getting Jon to thier camp than the vague description given to him by the Lord of Bones.

His guests had brought contributions to the meal as well.  Tormund had his customary kumis to produce a festive atmosphere.  Chestnuts, already scored and ready to toast by the fire, flat cakes with an apple and honey preserve, and a variety of roasted roots also arrived to accompany the stew. The long summer was over, food would be harder and harder to find, yet another good reason to get south of the Wall. It nauseated Mance a little to think of the enormous buffets of food that had been available to him as a Targaryen ... _did we really need so much when so many go without?_

"I left the baby crow at home, safe in his nest," Tormund explained to Mance. He could see the spearwife's expression fall for a moment before she realized Mance was looking at her.

Mance took a sip of his soup then blew on it. "I'm glad that's come up," he nodded to Tormund. "Now how was it he came to roost here in the first place again?" he asked, with a significant look at Ygritte.

It was as he had expected. Ygritte's role had been badly undermined by the first telling he had heard.

Watching her animated face, Mance thought that she was the picture of why he needed so badly to succeed for these people. She was bright, strong and lively. The Seven Kingdoms were nothing if they could not find a place for young people like her instead of letting them become mindless killing drones.

He felt pity for Jon's awkwardness as he listened to her, but nonetheless, he also had to laugh at her description of her own merciless innuendo and teasing of the lad.

"Didn't break his vows with youthough, did he?" the warg interrupted her tale. "Proves he's still a crow right there!"

Ygritte flushed, first with embarrassment and then with anger, but Mance spoke up quickly. "Ah, Orell, now you can't expect that a canny, seductive lass like Ygritte would want to rush the teaching of something of that nature."

The pretty spearwife smirked back at him, with a teasing glint in her eye. "Wouldn't be looking for company for yourself tonight, would you?"

 _His son didn't stand a chance against this one_. "I thank you for the tale," he answered, with a graceful deflection.

Despite Tormund's best efforts, the dinner didn't run too late. Days spent preparing for winter were hard, and one by one, his guests drifted off for the comfort of bed. Mance was dissappointed too, he had been dreading the sleepless night he knew was coming.

The time was coming quickly when he would need to send several small advance parties to scale the wall as he continued to lead the larger host southwards. Then, with both groups attacking at once from opposite sides, he was hopeful that they would be able to open the gates of the tunnel with the least bloodshed possible. It would be nearly impossible to restrain the Free Folk from killing crows, or from raiding and killing in the meantime, but he felt confident that he would be able to hold them back from harming civilians once they were assured the Wall stood between them and the terrors of the long night.

The problem was that it made all too much sense for him to send Jon forth with one of these smaller groups. He knew Castle Black, knew all of the wall to some degree, knew its defenses and the surrounding areas to the south. But that also put Jon completely out of his control.

_This is the Prince that was Promised and to risk him ..._

_Stop!_

He had let himself go mad with prophecy in the past, and it had accomplished almost nothing but pain. Even Lyanna ... he would not have changed or taken thier love back, but had he not been driven with such foolish haste, the terrible consequences might have been avoided.  _Scribbling a note to her father and entrusting it to a page!_

 _You can't do this again._ The prophecies existed without your interpreting them for hundreds of years. You aren't going to be the one to singlehandedly determine thier validity.

The problem was that if Jon was simply a mere spy, an escape attempt would be impossible to conceal in a group of a dozen or less. And no matter what Mance did or said, there would be no option for that group but to discard of a traitor among them, especially such a well prepared one.

He had to find a way to learn what Jon intended. Mance wracked his mind trying to think of a way to question Jon, to trick him perhaps, or to coerce truthful information from him.

Strangely, his mind drifted back to images of Rhaenys, holding his hands. To Jenla teaching her daughter to cook. Amusingly, to Ygritte, telling Jon she could teach him to have sex. Then Rhaegar remembered his own face, imagined himself patiently teaching Jon to read as a child.

_That's it!_

_Your job right now isn't to react to Jon, it's to teach him!_

To teach him why it is that the Free Folk must get south of the wall. To show him (he'd seen the White Walkers, but had he seen wights?) what they would become if they didn't. To show him who the true enemy is and to teach him regardless of such an enemy, that even a Wall is really just a line on a map, dividing humanity from each other based on the pettiest accident of where they happened to be born. To show him that Baratheon, Lannister, Targaryen and Stark were just petty words in comparison to who could and would truly lead people steadily towards a better future.

Here, now, he had the chance to teach Jon something for the first time and perhaps to even change his son's whole vision of the world. And if Mance could do it right, Jon would be an ally to him, and the Free Folk, even if he did end up escaping back at Castle Black.

He drew a deep breath, finally feeling his eyelids grow heavy. He would still worry about Jon's physical safety, but life was always uncertain anyway, and it did relieve him to realize that Jon's intent mattered less than his own. Then he drifted off to sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all who are giving this fic a shot! I have been really happy with the feedback I've been receiving. This is so personal to me, so thanks from the bottom of my heart. I like interacting with you all, so if you notice something you think is important to what I am doing here, please let me know.


	3. Chapter 3

_He wanted to die._

_How or why he had survived, who had cared for him, how he had been brought there at all ... he didn't know or hadn't understood when he'd been told.  Then again, he didn't care either._

_But he did know where he could go._

_As soon as the infamous black and white doors had closed behind him, he told the attendent why he was here. Even stricken as he  still was, he could see in the other man's face that he had been recognized. The small, swarthy man was not yet a master, however, and had moved lithely away to seek one who could grant him his wish._

_As soon as the other man had returned with his elder, he repeated himself. "I'm here to offer my face. I want to die."_

_The older man looked at him thoughtfully. "Valar Morghulis, Prince Rhaegar."_

_Yes, of course, all men die. "I mean now!"_

_The master pursed his lips, shaking his head at this outburst. "Your face is too famous to be of any use to us."_

_The smaller man cleared his throat. "Master, perhaps you are too hasty ..."_

_A flare of the old man's nostrils betrayed his fury. "I am well aware of the uses you wish for me to consider, all of them worldly and temporal. We serve the Many Faced God here and not the idols of petty politics," he concluded. "Now leave us."_

_Rhaegar didn't fully understand, he only knew the one who would have helped him had no power to do so, and the one who did have that power seemed almost to be toying with him. "Why even deign to come out yourself?" he asked bitterly. "If you knew you would refuse my bargain from the start?"_

_"Valar Dohaeris, your grace," he answered politely. "I would strike a different bargain with you instead ..."_

It had been a shameful choice anyway, Mance thought, as he packed his belongings.

He too was a person with a strong imagination and deep sensitivities. Where one life began and another ended, those traits hadn't changed. But the Prince of Summerhall's life had always been blighted by a sort of melancholic fatalism that was wholly foreign to the King Beyond the Wall.

Mance was a natural scrapper. And without a hint of shallowness, he also had a great capacity for joy in very simple pleasures as well. It made it easy to enjoying becoming him. Much easier than he deserved, he thought sometimes, when he allowed a voice to that smaller part of him that had remained Rhaegar Targaryen.

But atonement could not be sought in death, only an end to the pain. Thus, this great task had been set before him.

_Valar Dohaeris._

He finished with his own tent, then, and went to oversee the rest of the camp striking.

They were on the move within an hour of dawn's break.

Without allowing it to appear thus, Mance sought Jon as they walked.

The culture of the Northern houses in which Jon had been raised were exceptionally martial in comparison to the Southern kingdoms. Still, Mance knew that the difference between training and reality when it came to killing was, well ... stark.

"Was it hard for you to kill the Halfhand?" he asked, as he joined him.

Jon stopped, seeming to consider if there was any trick in the question. "Yes," he answered after a moment, not meeting Mance's eyes.

"You liked him," Mance guessed.

Jon answered with a curt nod.

Mance considered his own reply, but as other members of thier party walked passed, he changed his mind. "I like you, but if you're playing us false, it won't be hard for me to kill you," he said, ostensibly to Jon. "I've got wildling blood in my veins, these are my people."

"I understand."

The quickness of Jon's response irritated him. Even though he knew Jon himself believed it to be sincere, it held the arrogant impatience of youth, of wanting to claim an ideal without having any experience as to its practicality.

"Well how could you understand?"  _I've been here almost your entire lifetime, my son. How can you understand how hard it was to give up my chance, once I knew you had lived, to know you and to remain here instead?_

Jon swung around to face him. "You want to protect your people," he replied.

Mance measured his own hopes, even as he pushed that remaining piece of his first life further inside of himself.

This was too deep laid, he considered yet again, with a fleeting sense of desperation at the all the subterfuge that he must keep up.

Still, prophecy or no, he believed in a purposefulness to the world, and it was clear to him that whatever would come to pass, that Jon was a natural leader, and one that would be needed in the days soon to come, both north and south of the wall.

"Do you know what it takes to unite 90 clans, half of whom want to massacre the other half from one insult to another?" he challenged, not angrily, but in earnest.

"They speak 7 different languages in my army," he explained, hoping to somehow convey the years and years of work it had been to piece together a people from these squabbling tribes. "The Thenns hate the Hornfoots, the Hornfoots hate the Ice River clans, and everyone hates the Cave People. So, do you know how I got moon worshippers and cannibals and giants to march in the same army?"

Jon's expression was much humbler when he replied, "No."

"I told them we were all going to die if we don't get south, because that's the truth." He walked on then, leaving Jon to think on thier conversation.

"But what will you do, once you get there?" Jon asked, rushing to catch up.

It was a worthy question and it pleased him that Jon had made the effort to come and ask. "We'll just live," he answered, taking in Jon's skeptical face. "Oh aye, the how of it is more complicated, but I've met with the best and the worst of this lot, Jon Snow. And all of them knew even without my telling them that the day was coming fast when they'd have to change, or die."

"They won't be able to keep raiding at will," Jon murmured back.

Mance stroked his chin. "Your Ironborn kingdom might disagree," he argued mildly. "But there is more to our people than that. Especially among the young. We've talented sorts among us, Jon Snow, same as south of the wall. Boys who reforge those rare bits of steel we can cobble together. Girls who are good with a needle. Sharp traders, who'd make the shopkeepers of White Harbor cry at the bargains they can drive. People who can live off the land. There are probably those who'd take a turn at farming for that matter, but they've never any chance to have learned that as there's nothing can be cultivated here."

"Then you would make peace?"

Mance nodded curtly. "Aye. At least until the greater war is forced on us," he concluded, thinking grimly of the ice devils that Jon had already seen for himself, as he shuddered.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't abandoned this! Thanks to all who have bookmarked, or not given up on me in general. Work has just been hellarific, with a change of ownership shaking us all up, and so I'm just now getting back to having some free time again. I've invited someone I know in RL to see this, so maybe he can be my insurance policy that I don't get so distracted again!
> 
> I clearly did decide to go back to revisit how Rhaegar could have become Mance. I wish I had better notes from all the nerd sites I've read about this on as it's much more common for people to put forth the idea of glamoured rubies ala the Lord of Light clergy, but I've also seen some diehards posit the idea of facelessness, and it seems more comprehensive of an explanation to me. Anyway, they'll be more to come on that ... Oh, and I am playing a bit with the timeline of discussion that occurred on the show with stuff I wrote too. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks again to all readers and supporters, and what the hell, to any haters too!


End file.
